The Huntress
The Huntress is a short story taking place in the Prime Reality. I covers a short period during the time of the League of Six Kingdoms and their downfall, told in third-person perspective. It will be told in the context of Niha's mixed morals as a rising bounty huntress. Prologue Seen from the outside, Destral had experienced a rather dull and uneventful day. No visible guards would have been outside, no ships had sent out any Brotherhood members, and no sounds of yelling from bickering Makuta were heard. The latter would have been inevitable on any other day. But this day was different. The Brotherhood of Makuta had committed its first crime. It should not be said that the Brotherhood as a whole did it, though. Only a few rebellious Makuta knew about it. If any other heard of it, they would have--at the time--reported it to Miserix, and he would never have tolerated it. Nevertheless, the few who knew of the crime had been at work arranging missions schedules so that no ships would be sent out that day. They had had it arranged so that only the secret rebels were outside. It had been planned perfectly. Now a ship had been sighted that was small and compact with a single figure driving it. One of the rebels--the leader--hurried down the small ammount of land that was left to the island, and waited near the rocky shore. The ship docked, and out stepped the small, fragile frame of a female Toa of water. The Makuta rushed over to her, and spoke. "Hello, Toa. You've got the tablet?" The Toa handed him a small package, and the Makuta in turn handed her a small bag with what was most likely widgets in inside. "Thank you, Makuta." "And I thank you, Toa." Without another word, Niha left Destral to her next assignment. While the Toa drove her boat, she thought back to the last few years of her life, as she usually did while on the sea. Around ten years ago, when the Toa was still new to the world, she had a run-in with a sort of super Makuta--she didn't like to talk about it--that changed her relatively short life. She decided to turn to bounty hunting, and she took jobs from anyone that paid well. Her last mission was to retrieve an ancient tablet from the Great Temple and bring it to a Makuta. This mission had proven to be a difficult one. There were many painful traps leading up to the tablet, and one look at the girl's armor confirmed it. But still, it wasn't every day one earns 20,000 widgets. On her voyage to Destral, the Toa recieved a transmission from someone who called herself Helryx. This person would pay 100,000 widgets if she would come to the coordinates that the employer told her, and if the Toa would take the job she offered. "But on my map, these coordinates are just showing the ocean water," the Toa had said, confused. "Just go to them, and then we can talk," Helryx replied. So that was where she was going. Chapter One It was morning in Daxia, and a large and exotic ship would have been seen a few hundred meters from the coast of the island. A few row boats with the ship's crew and what looked like one prisoner drifted the rest of the way to the small dock The captain--he looked like a Vortixx--tied his row boat to the dock and helped the "prisoner" out of it. In actuality, the Toa wasn't a prisoner, she was a bounty hunter. It was quite clever, really. Her victims wouldn't be expecting a petite, fragile-looking Toa of water to come and kill them. The girl's name was Niha, and she was here to see her employer. The Vortixx captain said he was going to escort her to their base. "But first, would you take this blindfold off of me?" Niha asked in a steely tone. Her voice was tinted slightly with the accent of one who lived on the Northern Continent. The captain removed the cloth from her face, and Niha took in what was around her. She was standing on the dock, and at the end of the dock was a short beach of about twenty meters. A few sand crabs darted accross the beach's surface, looking for food. In the distance, a Muaka stretched an welcomed Niha to come over with a purr ("You don't fool me," Niha thought). Past the beach was a dense tropical forrest, and beyond that, Niha could only guess. Niha hadn't gotten accuainted with the ship's crew on the way to the island. She had to sit in a cell below deck and wear a blindfold so she couldn't "see the sights or hear the sounds," as the captain had put it. One thing she needed to know was how to get her employers to do her bidding. Then she might make a decent huntress. "What's you're name?" Niha asked the Vortixx, trying to be friendly. "Why would you care?" he snorted. "You're a bounty hunter." Niha took a mental note: being friendly wasn't the first thing on a bounty hunter's to-do list. She quickly took to a sarcastic attitude a hunter would take on. "Alright, I don't need to know. I'll just call you 'Captain Bob'." And then "Captain Bob" led her through the forrest with quite a bit less enthusiasm than when he offered. As he led her and the crew through the jungle, Niha saw many creatures and plants she had never seen before, but one plant caught her eye. There was a bright marine-colored flower with a strange orange liquid dripping from its thorns. When no one was looking, she stuffed it in her pack. Niha took an interest in botany, and she'd study the plant later. After about twenty minutes of walking through the forrest, they arrived at the base. The main entrance was large and dome-shaped, with two halls branching from it. When the captain finished getting Niha through security, he introduced her to a black-clad warrior. "This is Johmak," he said gruffly, still recovering from the "Captain Bob" episode. "She'll be escorting you to your employer's quarters." Johmak looked like she hated everything about Niha, and she probably did. "It's beyond me why we deal with these scum," Johmak complained. "Bounty hunters are always trouble." But she took orders, and escorted Niha through the halls. Niha soon realized that the dome-shaped room she was just in was not the main entrance. As she followed Johmak, she several of these domes, each with an entrance and security. With each passing person, Niha saw new levels of disgust. They all sad something in the lines of "Bounty hunters! They only kill for pay!", or "Why don't they work for a noble cause!", or "Humph!" All of these things made Niha feel incredibly guilty, but the real reason she took on bounty hunting wasn't for the pay. She did it for... As Niha entered the room Johmak had pointed to, Helryx spoke with the authority and calm of the ocean. "Niha, please sit down. we have a lot to discuss." More